Junior engineering faculty receive early career honors

Young faculty members who are pioneering new areas of communications networks, environmental sensing and other fields have received numerous awards for outstanding contributions early in their careers.

Mung Chiang, a professor of electrical engineering, received a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers from the White House. He was one of only 67 scientists to received the prestigious award at a ceremony held at the White House last December.

Chiang was recognized for his research on communication networks such as those that serve as the basis of the Internet, broadband access and wireless services. The citation for his award noted his “fundamental contributions to optimization, distributed algorithm and stochastic analysis of communication networks, leadership in the networking research community and mentorship of undergraduates.”

Michael McAlpine, an assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, won an Early Excellence Award from the Strategic Program for Asthma Research, which will provide him with $450,000 in research funding. He also received the Air Force Young Investigator Program Award and an Intelligence Community Young Investigator Contract.

Andrew Houck ’00, an assistant professor of electrical engineering, has been awarded a 2009 Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, which will provide funding for his research into applying the theories of quantum mechanics to the fields of computing and optics. He also won the 2008 Blavatnik Award for Young Scientists from the New York Academy of Sciences.

Alexandre d’Aspremont, an assistant professor of operations research and financial engineering, and Kelly Caylor, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering, received Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) awards from the National Science Foundation. The funding will support d’Aspremont’s research in applied mathematics and statistical learning and Caylor’s research on the movement of water through semi-arid ecosystems in Africa.

Michael Freedman, an assistant professor of computer science, has received a 2009 award from the Young Investigator Program of the Office of Naval Research, an award given to promising early-career researchers. Freedman’s research spans a range of areas of computer science, including distributed systems, security, networking and applied cryptography.